Treasures of the Earth - Gems - What processes in the depths of the Earth by Nova Documentary

[Music] gemstones precious metals and power building blocks of civilization but how are they created our earth is a master shot she knows how to cook these gems are really forged in unimaginable conditions deep inside the planet how did Mets shape our past I love steel it's actually the backbone of our society and how will these gifts be used to build the tools of tomorrow such a simple element has enabled all of the technology that surround us today it is amazing that this came from the sand that exists in our decimal we're going to launch this incredible telescope and we're going to send it a million miles into space from the earth to actually unlock the secrets of the universe and it will all rely on two ounces of God in this episode we go behind the sparkle of gemstones when you look into a beautiful gemstone you're saying something quite miraculous what are the secrets to their beauty this is no magic trick this is just chemistry and what scientific mysteries they reveal these are the biggest questions you can answer a bio geology it's amazing the role that diamonds have played an understanding earth as a whole treasures of the earth right now on Nova [Music] all-rounders we see earth's abundance spectacular mountains caribbean blue seas and plentiful crops but Earth's bounty is not just indeed some of our most important resources are forged even deeper inside our planet these are the minerals that help make our modern world and inspire us with their beauty gemstones like diamonds ruby and emerald we guard these treasures and cherish them as symbols of our love but they also hold secrets about the formation of earth itself just off central park along Manhattan's famous Fifth Avenue America's premier jeweler Tiffany has been selling these treasures to some of the world's richest people from the Gilded Age to the heydays of Hollywood the story even played a starring role in this famous 1961 movie Breakfast at Tiffany's Tiffany's the quintessential jeweler for the world Melvin curtly Tiffany's chief gemologist says that last year Tiffany sold more than four billion dollars worth of jewelry our goal is to really search for the ultimate those unique rare specimens when you look into a beautiful gemstone you're seeing something quite miraculous you know it's arresting here we've got really the most beautiful emerald necklace with this magnificent 45 carat emerald the color is just verdant green and it's just got this incredible saturation to it this is really truly spectacular at Tiffany's workshop top-quality gems are crafted enterprise jewelry one piece can take months to create that's when you get the beauty from the stone that's when you get the life the brilliance that's the wow effect but the story of how these gems were created goes back billions of years forged in some of the most tortuous conditions found anywhere on earth how can such violence and intensity create such delicate beauty [Music] clues about the massive force required lie just off the coast of China here geologists launched an searches for evidence in the ancient rocks it seems like the rocks are talking to me and there's always a story to tell hiding beneath the tranquility and the peacefulness of the rocks is a story of violence and tremendous complexities it doesn't take long for a Chan to find a layer of rocks folded nearly in half by the forces that create earthquakes this rock layer used to be flat lying and continuous now it's completely folded forming a v-shape the same kind of violent forces gave earth gemstones every gemstone is forged by a unique geologic recipe of chemistry heat and intense pressure now earth is a master shot setting the temperature and pressure just right using the right ingredient she knows how to cook various kinds of gemstones the most treasured of all gems are created hundreds of miles below the earth's surface it is here where it's streaming high pressures and hot temperatures turn one of Earth's most basic elements into exquisite hard crystals diamonds so what are diamonds made up to discover the ingredients requires doing something horrifying for any gem lover torching a perfectly good diamond which is exactly what chemist andreas cellar will do and we often hear the diamonds are forever when we put this guy into a really hot flame and drop him into liquid oxygen it begins to Sparkle and look the diamond is burning away as it burns it gets smaller smaller smaller eventually it disappears it's gone we can burn it away to nothing except carbon dioxide and that's because diamonds are made of nothing more than carbon so we've taken the the hardest natural material and we've made it disappear and yet this is no magic trick this is just chemistry carbon is one of Earth's most common elements nature's building blocks it is essential to all living things plants animals even our bodies and crucial to man-made structures throughout our modern world carbons versatility can be seen in two things both pure carbon but completely different diamonds and graphite or ordinary pencil led when you look at these two the diamonds and the tip of the pencil it seems almost insane to imagine that they're made of the same substance the same element carbon and yet what it comes down to is the way in which those carbons are linked together the way in which atoms link together is the essence of chemistry in diamonds one carbon atom bonds with four others this is repeated to create a dense cage like crystal structure but in pencil led carbon bonds with only three others forming flat sheets that's stacked like a deck of cards the sheets lie on top of each other but are not fully bonded they can slide one past the other and when we write with a pencil what we're doing is we're peeling those sheets off one or two at a time leaving a little gray trail a little bit like a snail so why do carbon atoms sometimes make three bonds like in pencil length and at other times for this is just an extraordinary thing how can one of the softest materials one of the hardest materials both be formed of pure carbon Bob Hazen of the deep carbon Observatory says the difference between pencil led and diamond can be explained by the environment where the bonds form if you have fairly low pressure the atoms can spread out they don't feel compressed or strain and so you have a much more relaxed crystal structure graphite or pencil and forms in low pressure like near Earth's surface but diamonds only form hundreds of miles deep inside our planet where the temperatures and pressures are extreme as soon as you get pressure the atoms are forced together there has to be more and more efficiently packed together and so the thing about Diamond is carbon atoms are incredibly efficiently packed together those efficient bonds are the key to making these prized treasures recently a remarkable diamond the second largest gem quality stone ever discovered was found in Botswana weighing in at an incredible 1109 carats it's truly historical this could be you know the most incredible piece of a diamond depakote the estimated value of the diamond is 70 million dollars that's a whole lot of money for a rock that is nothing more than efficiently organized carbon the secret of that efficient organization of atoms lies deep within the architecture of the carbon atom itself at the atom center is a nucleus with six protons and neutrons surrounding the nucleus are an equal number of orbiting electrons arranged in what are called shells the innermost shell can hold only two electrons the second shell can hold eight but carbons six electrons only fill up half of that outer shell leaving the atom unstable every atom wants to find a comfortable electron arrangement a filled show how carbon is in a funny position has got six electrons so it's far away from two it's far away from tenants in the middle so carbon is never quite that happy it's always kind of striving to find a different configuration the configuration when carbon is most happy is when its electron shells are filled like in this diamond crystal but there are many combinations that can fill carbon shells and that's why it's such an important element in our natural world it even plays a starring role at this glamorous Tiffany gawe the movie stars hair is made of protein which is packed with carbon they're flawless skin and high cheekbones have a lot of carbon - and of course under the extreme conditions deep inside Earth carbon atoms bond into the exquisitely hard exquisitely clear and exquisitely expensive diamond but it took a lot more than beauty for these diamonds to get to the red carpet diamonds are forced to Earth's surface in a very special kind of volcanic eruption the rock inside traveled hundreds of miles through Earth's mantle and up to 30 miles an hour the diamond just comes along for the ride raw diamond crystals can be seen still embedded in this Rock known as kimberlite the diamond was just an accidental passenger all route to the surface of the earth these eruptions lead behind very deep funnels of kimberlite and diamond which is why mining diamonds takes a severe toll on the landscape and at times an even bigger toll on humans in places like Sierra Leone Africa uncontrolled mining has led to horrific conditions for the miners the diamonds they find can head straight for a black market that have funded warlords and weapons in brutal civil wars these are the so-called blood diamonds diamonds that are legally exported are subject to strict controls and sent to just a handful of diamond centers worldwide 90% of America's diamonds passed through one city new york famous for its hustle-bustle and bling this is 47th Street the diamond district where trader Ronnie Van der Linden is one of its many unofficial mayor's welcome to 47th Street land of everything but what this Street is really known for what it's about it's magnificent diamonds I like the Schism I like it all today he has a little business with Gregg wages area Gregory hey Ronnie how are you how are you buddy that's great the end of Austin yeah negotiating the sale of a quarter of a million dollar square shaped diamond I think this might be the winner a key step to make a diamond worth that kind of money is the cut which reveals the sparkling beauty of the stone Michael Kaufman is a master diamond cutter I've been in the business since 1966 I started off as an apprentice diamond cutter that was a baby literally a baby today he's repairing a chipped diamond while diamonds are the hardest material on earth they aren't very tough which means if you strike it at just the right angle between the planes of carbon atoms it will break this line of weakness is called the cleavage train I'm going to look for the grain of the stone people don't realize that diamond has grain just like wood has green if you take this entire building and put it on top of this diamond in the street it will make a hole in the streets but yet if you hit it on the cleaving grain it will take off the small piece sometimes that's all similar that grain is also key to transforming the rough rock into a shimmering faceted gem when the job is done and all the facets are where they should be and I see the brilliance I see that's don't talk to me and says Michael did a good job revealing a diamonds beauty comes down to the careful arrangement of these facets diamonds need to be cut in very very specific parameters to get it to maximize light return this is the round brilliant cut one of the most popular shapes in the world when a diamond is proportioned in a perfect way it will act as a Hall of Mirrors if it's not then the light will push out of the back and you'll basically lose life in 1919 a Belgian mathematician named Marcel Tolkowsky used principles of optical physics and math to determine the optimum number and angle of facets to create a diamonds that perfectly caught the light when he came along it was more putting a science to the actual proportions and understanding that they matter imagine this is an uncut crystal with a smooth surface on it and now we're going to shine green light onto it Debbi Berube she a physicist explains how light can be captured in a crystal by using a green laser so our camera can see it so we see that spot on the wall because most of the light is getting transmitted to the other side I was instead we used a faceted crystal we can see how most of the light is getting trapped and bouncing around inside the crystal and a lot of it is coming back reflected into our eyes very much like a Hall of Mirrors Tolkowsky found that a diamond cut with nearly 60 carefully angled facets created an exquisite geometry that reflected light around the stone many times then bounced it out through the top and into our eyes we call this phenomenon brilliance when white light enters a diamond at just the right angle something extraordinary happens these facets along with how the diamond affects wavelengths of light disperse it into a rainbow of colors like light through a prism this creates the flashes of color called fire because of diamonds hardness the polishing of the facets creates such incredible mirrors that the diamond bounces the light back to the eye so you're really getting a combination of light to give this beautiful dispersion and sparkle it turns out that a diamonds brilliant Sparkle comes down to optical physics something truly to sing about as Marilyn Monroe did in this 1953 classic Gentlemen Prefer Blondes kotti in washington DC there is a very special diamond that Marilyn Monroe would surely have loved to get her hands on 6 a.m. inside the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History the gem gallery is on lockdown curator of gems Jeffery post is removing the museum's most infamous and most visited exhibit from its bulletproof case what I'm holding right now is probably the world's most famous diamond this is the Hope Diamond it is a large blue diamond 45 and a half carats the largest finest blue diamond that we know of anywhere in the world post says it is impossible to estimate the diamonds value in part because of its long history of entry it was bought in the 17th century by John Baptist even yay and sold to king louis xiv of france it is believed that during the French Revolution the diamond was smuggled to London recut then purchased by the Hope family where it got its name but only after it was sold to the American socialite Evalyn Walsh McClane whose family was soon struck by a series of tragedies did the diamond to earn its famed reputation of being cursed so finally this legendary and mysterious diamond was purchased by the jeweler Harry Winston and given to the Smithsonian Institution there is of course no scientific way to shed light on the diamonds alleged curse but there is definitely science behind its magical blue collar and today Jeffery post wants to reveal the secret the precious diamond is put into a mass spectrometer where a laser is used to break free individual atoms that then travel through the machine a clear diamond is pure carbon so all the atoms would travel at the same speed but today the machine detects a few atoms flying faster this means there is an impurity in the diamond boron now right here traces of a lighter element called boron on average our measurements revealed that the Hope Diamond has about 1/2 of a part per million of boron and it's the tiny little bit that is just enough to make a colorless diamond the deep dark blue color that we know is the Hope Diamond but boron isn't blue so why does this impurity change the color it results from how different atoms handle light the carbon atoms in a diamond are bound together by their electrons but these electrons can also interact with light when it shines into the gem in clear diamond crystals since all the electrons are bound together all the colors in white light pass through in the Hope Diamond an atom of boron replaces a carbon atom but boron can only make three bonds not four that changes the electronic structure of the diamond when white light hits this atom it absorbs some of the wavelengths of red light but the blue light passes right through making the Hope Diamond appear it's unique color of blue the Hope Diamond is one of the most unique objects in the world look at how many other blue diamonds comparable to the Hope Diamond have been found and the answer is zero there may not be another diamond quite like the hope but gems can come in a surprising array of colors we all know emeralds are green rubies red and sapphires blue well frankly that's just plain wrong is this a sapphire this is blue it looks like a sapphire it's nice and big but it's not sapphire you can't go by color in fact none of these green stones are emeralds yet surprisingly all of these are what we call sapphires color is something that Mike Scott is passionate about and wants to understand in everything from brilliant gemstones to the koi fish he keeps in his backyard color brings out all kinds of emotion just like smells do I enjoy the complexity or understanding how things work to me color sets what mood I'm in Scott has amassed what is considered one of the world's most important collections of gems outside of a royal family Mike Scott is one of the world's great connoisseurs of gems he goes out of his way to find the most beautiful colored stones and each of those colored stones is telling us a story part of my collection is to show there's more to the world and sapphire ruby and emerald scott may not have a diamond quite like the hope but he has collected diamonds in almost every known color including yellow green pink and even the rarest red Scott's rainbow collection was made possible by Apple computers he made his fortune as the first CEO taking it from Steve Jobs garage to going public on Wall Street I hand-built the first 10 Apple two's but Scott says his first task at Apple came not from Steve Jobs but the other employees at the time my first job as president of Apple was to tell Steve Jobs he had to take a bath it seems that Steve's special diet was creating body odor he's ago she Eights everything so he agreed to take a bath more often and I had to agree to read his diet book hopefully that it would cause me to lose some weight which it didn't Scott didn't plan on investing his fortune in gemstones but he got hooked the first time he tried to buy himself an expensive one because it turned out to be a fake that got me further interested and how do you know the difference since you can't just tell by color and by looking at a stone a physicist by training Scott wants to better understand the nature of minerals materials that are crystalline in structure and include gemstones Scott is so devoted to this pursuit that he has removed all the traditional furniture from his Silicon Valley living room and turned it into a world-class gem and mineral lab out with the couch in with the Raman spectrometer Mike Scott has put part of his fortune into building the world's largest database of minerals their structures their properties their optical characteristics so we understand this rich realm the kingdom of minerals in much more complexity and completeness than we ever have before today Scott is analyzing a sapphire a 30 carat one this one's from Sri Lanka like the Hope Diamond it's blue but how it got its color is it completely different geologic story sapphires are actually more rare than diamonds making one requires the force of moving mountains literally sapphires are formed in Earth's crust not the deeper mantle where diamonds form during the geologic process of plate tectonics all the continents on earth ride on giant tectonic plates pushed and pulled by heat deep within the earth for likely billions of years the continents have moved around crashing over and under each other causing earthquakes and pushing up huge mountains beneath Earth's surface heat and pressure created from the massive friction liquefy Rock that reforms into new minerals sometimes sapphires many of the best sapphires come from the island nation of Sri Lanka off the coast of India which was caught in the middle of colliding plates 600 million years ago gemologist Andy Lucas is on the hunt for these precious stones a task that requires going down in a traditional pit mine hi can I take a look thank you sir entering the mine Lucas finds himself in a wet potentially dangerous environment now you can see the wooden braces you can see the struts supporting them and I have a problem here was groundwater so they can't go too deep and they have to be careful for the eruption so they don't have a tunnel cave-in what they are mining is a loose ground with the pulled Elom then they'll take this metal bar pointed metal bar and they'll dig it into the elog then they put it in bags the bags are hoisted up on ropes Andy's route back up the slippery bamboo scaffold is a bit tougher once on the surface again and the examines the gravel Elom it's gonna look like a lot of mud but also with some pebbles in there now I'm not seeing any gemstones yet but after washing bag after bag after bag of this muddy gravel then they might find something maybe something that can change their lives the Elom is sediment comprised of rocks and dirt that washed here from upstream nature kind of did a bit of the work and concentrated them in an area if a miner is lucky enough to find a gemstone in this loose alum it is sent to the city to be polished into true treasures Emile Simone and his family specialize in polishing and cutting sapphires my family has been in the business for five generations it comes into your blood and they need it stays there the beauty of the stone it's it's just beautiful you can just sit for hours just drooling over it today they're at work trying to figure out how to cut a 90 carat rough sapphire a Finnish gem jumps in value when it hits a larger threshold like 10 20 or 50 carats it's almost a bluff accustomed Simone's goal is to cut this down to a well faceted 50 carrot gem but that will take careful planning we can't sit on it for two weeks 10 days just you know foot around with it think what's best come back take a look have a cup of tea and then think about it make the wrong decision and it could be a costly mistake one of the world's most celebrated gems is the 12 carat sapphire from Sri Lanka that was worn as an engagement ring by Lady Diana today the same ring is worn by the new Duchess of Cambridge this brilliant blue sapphire is estimated to be worth $400,000 [Music] but in the bustling sri lankan market the sapphires that lukas discovers are not what you might expect this stone has very little color in it not quite colorless but almost believe it or not this is a sand wire sapphires are a variety of the mineral corundum which in its pure state is colorless corundum crystals are made up of aluminum and oxygen atoms it is the second hardest natural gemstone after diamond but colorless corundum is not a treasure its value comes from its impurity what gives corundum its color is what we call trace elements in the case of blue sapphire it's iron and titanium different impurities absorb and reflect different colors of light similar to the Hope Diamond take a look at the color would you believe me if I told you this is a sapphire this stone is purple and it's still a sapphire sapphires come in yellow pink and of course blue but one color of sapphire has a name all its own Ruby I think most people don't realize Ruby and Sapphire they're related they're both from the mineral corundum they're varieties it's just a color distinction that we give these gems they're famous names ruby's color comes from the element chromium their rarity makes them one of the most valuable gems sapphires and rubies show how even Earth's imperfect recipes can lead to some of its most beautiful creations cooked by the heat and pressure of colliding tectonic plates impurities can turn a simple dull rock into a rainbow of rare and precious gemstones but not all gems are found washed loose emeralds are some of the rarest gems but hunting for them requires patience and explosive power Jamie Hill and Ed spear of North Carolina had been mining emeralds for more than 30 years almost 10% of all of the emeralds found on this property are greater than a hundred carats that means they're that big or bigger these are some of the biggest best emeralds in the world emeralds are formed by the hot mineral rich fluids generated when land masses collide as they did about 380 million years ago here in what is now North Carolina the challenge for Jamie and Ed is that these emeralds can be anywhere here still encased in the rock where they formed that's a nice specimen that's where the firepower comes in we have got over 3,500 pounds of high explosive it's gonna be over 10,000 tons of rock this is gonna be this is gonna be a big one I mean a real baby blowing up a lot of earth is all in a day's work for ED and Jamie but today like most they come up short the explosion didn't reveal any obvious new emeralds so we've got several days of hard work here but I'm very excited because emeralds could be anywhere at any moment oh there's the big one remember that remember that ever it's that big one that you found at the end of the day you're about to go oh I'm going to go home I was tired I'll never forget that that that emerald weighs over fourteen hundred and fifty characters making it one of the 10 largest Emeril's ever found in North America and this is only one of the treasures Jamie and Ed have found to date they have uncovered 9 million dollars worth of emeralds and have no plans to stop looking but if two men at one location can uncover that many it begs the question are precious gems like diamonds and emeralds really that rare it's so funny to think about the marketing of diamonds making them sound incredibly rare and incredibly valuable and of course a big perfect diamond is a rare object but the typical diamonds half a carat one carat diamond they're available by the billions and they have to because otherwise you wouldn't have a jewelry market robert hazen believes that the value of gemstones is largely a creation by the jewelry industry not nature but in some cases the value comes from traditions thousands of years old nowhere is that more evident than in modern Beijing here despite the onslaught of rising wealth and luxury goods there is one ancient treasure that rises above all others Jade in China Jade can be even more valuable than diamonds notation you college all this jade necklace is called waters love it is made up of the highest quality stones perfect for attending galas I think will elevate the party going ladies status instantly whoever wears waters loved she will be the queen of the party Lisa dawn sells Jade pieces that can cost upwards of twenty million dollars even traditional Jade bracelets which have been worn by women here for thousands of years can easily cost tens of thousands well here it is all functional when you click - Jade pieces together the clicking sound represents a character trait a refusal to be contaminated by evil influences Jade bracelets are thought to bring luck and happiness with no end or beginning just like their shape I'm going down Rancho Santa Fe when a Chinese woman marries diamonds are not important what is important is to have a jade bracelet and ring they embody the ideas of Confucius benevolence righteousness courtesy wisdom and Trust how can one stone mean so much to so many there is no better place to find an answer than in the heart of Imperial China the Forbidden City lene shoot is a specialist in ancient Jade dye Steve uncle knows even Westerners may believe Jade is a normal stone but in the eyes of us Chinese jade is not only a beautiful stone we have such a long history of jade objects in China from its initial use of connecting us to the gods we add more functions to it throughout the years and now the culture of jade coincides with Chinese culture and history over China's very long history Jade became increasingly connected with the Imperial ruler hold up weasel Jade's association with the Emperor developed stages owning Jade was forbidden to common people they could lose their heads if they were caught using jade they were strict rules some of the most important pieces of jade were the Emperors seals hold she say I shall about all of the 25 she were equally important tightly connected to the Emperor's rule and lawmaking this is a green jade she for signing important documents that make announcement to the entire nation thought that woman Kim guide usually whoever owned the she was to own the entire country ever since then every dynasty carried on the tradition dynasties fought over the control of the Shi the English word for Jade describes what are actually two completely different minerals jadeite and nephrite my left hand is a mineral called jadeite my right hand is a greenish mineral called nephrite both are you know generally speaking referred to as Jade but chemically these are two very different minerals one way you can tell between a jadeite and nephrite is to rub one against the other and you can see that the jadeite being slightly harder can scratch the nephrite nephrite has the much longer history in Chinese culture one massive piece of nephrite Jade that was prized above all others by the Emperor still sits in the Forbidden City so eight songs a song that I saw was easy I mean altogether this sculpture took ten years to complete it is also the largest Jade sculpture in China that tradition of intricate carving still continues in the town of yong-jo north of Shanghai Jade is not shipped away like marble historically pedal-powered machines and a hard abrasive were used to slowly grind and shape the stone even today with the help of modern tools Jade requires patience to slowly reveal the beauty of the stone master carver Eugene Gao says it is unlike diamond which is clean you can't cut Jade the first step is to remove the unnecessary parts the second step is grinding slowly for the piece to take shape the earliest uses of jade were as primitive tools because the toughness and durability of the stone allowed it to be shaped into useful forms richard Vincey is a material scientist at Lehigh University mostly we associate toughness or being damaged tolerant with metals with a lot of minerals as soon as they start to crack they just come apart jade is a little bit different and it comes down to the internal structure not down at the atomic scale but at the micrometer scale now that's looking more promising maybe if we were to try to come into this area over here this piece of jade has all of these little crystal fibers that are long and skinny they look almost like little noodles of spaghetti and they're all packed together tightly to make the solid crystal in this area the fibers are all running this way but in this area looks like they're running across this way down here they're running at sort of a diagonal so as you try to crack it the crack may go through one bundle following the fibers but as soon as it hits the next bundle where the fibers are oriented in a different direction it has a very difficult time and that gives it a fair degree of toughness that toughness has led to another belief widespread in China that Jade protects the person who wears it one reason so many people buy Jade jewelry jinsol walk away Patricia Chinese people normally believe Jade carries a blessing we've all heard many stories that a piece of jade shatters in order to protect his master I think it's often the case that people associate physical characteristics with more moral or mystical characteristics so the the characteristics that we associate with that material are coming from its individual atoms and their electron structure and how those atoms are arranged we really can't appreciate that at the level at which we're using it but we certainly appreciate the properties that result from it there is another gem with unusual microscopic properties that some call the Queen and it is mostly found down under Australia has 95% of the world's precious opal black opal is the most rare and famously comes from one town lightning ridge Anthony Malone's is a fourth-generation miner I've seen my blood I look at diamonds and emeralds and rubies and sapphires or opal sir queen opal Lisa queen of all the gems melona says the only way to find an opal is to carefully dig away at the Outbacks clay walls the thing about opal just when you think you know what you're doing it'll surprise you it can form anywhere what you're done one is this piece of machinery gone right for all because fortunately in the white rock the colors of opal make it relatively easy to spot these vivid colors are what gives the stone its value opal can come in many colors including deep blue greens intense purple or fiery red and it has a sparkle all its own again a result of its microscopic structure I love opals not only are they very flashy but they're also very different from most of the other gemstones instead of irregular little crystals there are these perfect little spheres an opal is made up of tiny spheres of silica a mixture of silicon and oxygen found in sand an even ordinary window glass the spheres are so small that when packed together they can scatter wavelengths of light creating flashes of different colors and so depending on the size of the spheres you will get different colors appearing certain opals will flash mostly green or mostly red or maybe a mixture of these colors opal is not a crystal like most other gems it is a collection of billions of glassy spheres packed together and surrounded by a small amount of water just--how opals formed is not completely understood one interpretation is that under rare conditions water percolated through the ground and dissolved silica from rock that viscous mineral mix filled in cracks in the earth and slowly solidified like jell-o in a mold opal can form in any gap or even fill in fossils left by ancient life these rare fossils are a colorful record of a prehistoric world preserved in part by a unique geology in Australia where very little happened all evidence of an exquisite connection between geology life and precious gems the beauty of every gem comes for unique recipe inside earth but can they tell us something more are there clues held by these gems that can solve some of the most enduring mysteries in the field of geology one of those mysteries is when the important process of plate tectonics began giant tectonic plates pushed and pulled by the need to release heat deep within earth have shaped the map of the continents into what we know today and made earth more geologically active than all other known planets but when did this critical process begin when plate tectonics begins is a huge question some people think is more than four billion years ago some people think it didn't really get started until less than a billion years that's a huge discrepancy so any insight we have on how plate tectonics began is incredibly valuable to understanding our dynamic planet Stephon Shirey at the Carnegie Institution for science thinks these diamonds may hold the answer literally so we're looking at three rough diamonds rough diamonds means uncut Shirey a geochemist is investigating what others consider bad diamonds ones with flaws tiny bits of Earth trapped inside called inclusions here's one here here's another one these black specks would make this diamond not good for the jewelry market so Tiffany's would not like this particular specimen Tiffany's may not want them but for Shirey these diamonds are in effect an ancient safety deposit box preserving the chemistry of early earth diamonds are the best container you could have for anything when they enclose the mineral they become the best time capsules we have the first step is getting to the floor after all this container is made of the hardest material on earth what we have here is a diamond cutting laser it's going to cut from top to bottom and that part of the diamond will be actually vaporized all right Joe let's go ahead and cut this baby alright here we go ready when I see a diamond like anybody I love its beauty but I really love a diamond that has a lot of flaws then the diamonds are polished to clearly reveal the inclusions and we can get a really good look at the inclusions you can see one two three four by breaking through the diamond and analyzing the chemistry of the minerals Shirey has found something startling minerals billions of years old that could only have formed on the surface but given the diamonds formed deep within the earth how did that happen Shai he believes that the motion of plate tectonics carried the minerals deep into Earth where the material was encapsulated by a diamond so that's a dead ringer for the idea that they're from the surface of the earth but Shirey has never found surface minerals in a diamond older than 3.2 billion years and that suggests that plate tectonics or a related process could have begun at about that time we can take very tiny grains and scale up to very large questions and these are the biggest questions you could answer about geology on the earth and we're doing it with almost the smallest specimens that the human can study you know it's amazing the role that diamonds have played an understanding earth as a whole diamonds give us hints about how earth works and how it was made the journey of gemstones both flawed and flawless reveal forces of Earth's unimaginable power as well as the heights of artistic and scientific endeavor around the world that process continues today as scientists are finding new uses for these ancient treasures lasers that employ the clear optics of rubies and diamonds thermal conductivity used in the next generation of quantum computing so whether under museum guard for sale at Tiffany or in laboratories around the world these treasures prove that their value both aesthetic and scientific can indeed last forever [Music]

Channel: Heaven's StoneZ

Views: 605,189

Rating: 4.7807879 out of 5

Keywords: Black Jade Translucent, Natual Jade, Natual Jadeite, Icy Jade, Icy Jadeite, Green jade, Grade A jade, Type A Jadeite, Natural Black Jade, Natural Black Jadeite Translucent, Green Jadeite, Omphacite Jadeite, Green Jade, Type A Jadeite Jade, Translucent, Rare Gemstone, Rare Jadeite Translucent, Rare Black Translucent Jadeite, Super Green Jadeite, Dark Green Translucent Jadeite, Transparent Jade, Jewellery

Id: O_UmLNMb-o4

Length: 52min 16sec (3136 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 13 2016